How wildfires forced California winemakers to make more ros茅
If you鈥檙e seeing more ros茅 wine on the store shelves, it鈥檚 not only because demand has gone up but because of all the smoke from fires. A lot more winemakers couldn鈥檛 make their usual vintages and could only make ros茅, in order to avoid a smokey-tasting wine.
After recent years of wineries being put through the fire, the saying, "Ros茅 all day" has a new meaning.
"The smoke was really heavy in the state of California. As we know, we weren't anticipating making ros茅. So a lot of wineries are making rose not by choice, that's all they had was to make ros茅 out of it," said Paul Bargetto, co-owner and winemaker at Soquel Vineyards.
Bargetto has been in the wine business for over 30 years. Like many other winemakers, he had to switch gears and make a whole lot more ros茅 than his usual pinot noir red wine. Which he ended up producing 750 cases worth of ros茅.
"We picked the grapes, we crushed it, we went immediately to the press and pressed it lightly just until we picked up a little color. So we lightly pressed it into the tanks. Fermented for about 7-10 days and we didn't ferment on the skin. That's why we don't have a lot of color there," Bargetto said.
Bargetto says it鈥檚 a disappointing year for pinot noir but they made the best out of it with rose.
"So what you're going to see now is a lot of ros茅's coming from California because of the fires and a lot of people didn't anticipate making ros茅 but here we are in the abundance of Ros茅 for 2020 harvest, he said.
Some also say it's good timing and are seeing an increase in demand for ros茅.
"Ros茅 has increased not only in popularity, but it's really increased in quality, too," said Julia Conley, Wine tasting room manager. "Now, people are realizing that the markets there and so they're making better wine and that drives each other obviously quality drives demand, demand drives quality."
Bargetto says he doesn鈥檛 think we鈥檒l be seeing as many wineries making ros茅 next year because it wasn鈥檛 even their intent this year, but if fires hit again, we just might.
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